


In this beat up old sedan

by tamareens



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Friends to Lovers, Kim Jongin is whipped, M/M, Mention of homophobic dad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-07
Updated: 2020-11-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:28:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27427945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tamareens/pseuds/tamareens
Summary: Kyungsoo is slipping away and Jongin can't imagine living his life without that doe eyes and heart-shaped lips.
Relationships: Do Kyungsoo | D.O/Kim Jongin | Kai
Comments: 8
Kudos: 38





	In this beat up old sedan

**Author's Note:**

> Shouy out to Vina, the one that had to read my sucky writings since high school. Now, you wouldn't be the only one to suffer, lol.
> 
> Disclaimer: English is not my first language and this is un-beta-ed, so I'm deeply sorry if you find typos and grammar errors.

Seoul has been raining for a couple of days. It’s 5pm on Friday and the rain doesn’t seem like it’s going to stop soon. Kyungsoo sighs, thinking he might actually have to ask Jongin to pick him up at the office. He started to type the words but then deletes it, _maybe I should wait a little more._

  
So he waits and it’s almost thirty minutes later when the thunder gets loud and the sky shows no sign of the rain stopping.

  
Just when he’s about to type a new text, his phone rang.

  
“Hi, I was about to text y—”

  
He can hear Jongin’s worried (and annoyed) voice over the line, asking him where he is. “I’m near so just wait for me, okay?”

  
Kyungsoo nods and realizes the younger can’t see him, “Yeah, sure. I’ll wait in the lobby.”

  
About ten minutes later he saw the familiar black car approaching, the handsome face driving it probably the only good thing about the beat up old sedan. It’s rusty in some, if not most, places, the window knob is still an old manual one, and he knew by heart that the passenger seat cannot be straightened up no matter what you do.

  
The car was Jongin father’s first car before he gave it to his son when he graduated high school. The car has been with them for years now, it’s a silent witness of mornings when Kyungsoo had to feed the driver because they were both already late for morning class. It’s also the place of their first kiss, their second kiss, and their third kiss in the same night in front of Kyungsoo’s house. It’s almost like their first home, where they shifted from best friends to a bit more than friends and finally to boyfriends who live together. Of all the uncertainties in their life, the old car is one thing that’s certain for them.

  
As if having their own brain, Kyungsoo’s feet walked towards the car and opened the passenger door. He sits in silence as he puts the seatbelt on. Unlike their usual comfortable and peaceful one, this silence is making him feel uneasy.

  
_Oh, boy, this is gonna be a long ride home._ Kyungsoo thinks as he looks outside the blurry window.

* * *

The older didn’t know when he started to doze off until he was awakened by a familiar tune. It doesn’t take him too long to recognize one of his favorite songs. While humming lightly to the intro, a little smile appears as he remembers singing this song every day for a little over a week until Jongin has had enough and threw pillow at him every time he began to sing.

  
“I think about that day,” Kyungsoo began to sing the first line, “I left him at a Greyhound station West of Santa Fe,”

  
The current traffic matches the first scene of the movie, if only the sun is shining bright at them instead of hiding between the clouds.

“Don’t you think this is a sad song?” Jongin frowns at the steering wheel.

  
“Huh?” bewildered, Kyungsoo looks up at him.

  
“I looked up the lyrics the other day, it’s kinda sad.”

_'Cause maybe in that sleepy town_  
_He'll sit one day, the lights are down_  
_He'll see my face and think of how he used to know me_

“That’s because you pays more attention to something sad,”

  
“I’m not.”

  
“You are. You’re dramatic.”

  
“I really am not!”

  
Kyungsoo doesn’t want to argue with him, even if it’s a playful one, so he just shrugs it off and gets back at looking at the rain outside. The dark cloud above doesn’t seem like they’re going to disappear and so is the heavy rain. Add the heavy traffic before the weekend at rush hour and it’s officially the worst traffic ever. Soon, street and car lights are lit up and blurred by the heavy rain. It’s serene and Kyungsoo wishes he could hold one of Jongin’s hands in his, or stroke his hair, or slow dance with him under the rain, or just simply buried in his hug.

  
The clock on the dashboard gives them a dim light inside the car, as if mocking them for the ten minutes they spent in silence.

  
“Jongin,”

  
“Hmm?” The younger look up from his phone that’s been glued to his hand for the past minutes when they completely stopped in the middle of the road.

  
“Remember the first time we met?”

  
He looks at him weird. “Of course,” tilt his head a little to the side, “I made a home run and hit your head when you walked past the baseball field. Why? Are you finally going to tell me you came to watch me play?” He can’t help but smile at the memory over twenty years ago.

  
“We’ve been over this,” Kyungsoo chuckles, “I didn’t knew you before that day!” he can’t help that his eyes turn bigger than they already are, “I went to the field… because Dad wanted me to learn baseball and ‘be a man’ or something.” He rolls his eyes in annoyance, “he was always the insecure one for my masculinity.”

  
Jongin stays silent. Knowing for years they knew each other, Kyungsoo’s dad is a sore topic for them to talk about. He’s never really around, but he also never lets people forget that he is there. When Kyungsoo decided to move in with Jongin, his dad hadn't come home for almost a week, but two days later, he sent his son an envelope full of money and an adult magazine.

  
“You’ve been to my old room, you saw how many cars, robots, and action figures there. It was all my dad. My mom would buy me things I asked for, like that psyduck plushy I brought to our home, but my dad…”

  
Jongin does remember the unidentified object that Kyungsoo insisted was a pokemon, before it turned into a colorless and shapeless object with two eyes and a bill. It was clearly loved dearly by the owner, he said he never went to sleep without the doll.

  
“When he saw the doll in my bed, he told me that that wasn’t what boys were supposed to play with. Not the toy I was supposed to play with. So, he bought me a fire truck with remote control the next day.” He let a long sigh escape, “I know this may seem trivial to some people, but for a seven years old me, he made me think if I was wrong for choosing it. It’s not even Barbie or anything, just a pokemon doll.”

With the traffic completely stills, rain falling outside, lights dimmed, and Kyungsoo’s eyes completely empty while talking about his childhood, Jongin had the time to think about how this beautiful human being beside him had been through. His cheeks aren’t as chubby as they first meet, it’s hollow now. His skin is starting to look a little dull and wrinkles started to form, even his eye bags are darker and prominent compared to the days they spent in college. Yet the smile never changes, it makes his world warmer. And sparks in Kyungsoo’s eyes never vanish, it makes Jongin’s life brighter.

  
“I don’t know what’s gotten into him last week,” his mind takes him back to last weekend when his father came banging at their apartment door at one in the morning and shouted profanities. “Maybe he just finally caught up with the fact that you’re not just a phase,” a sad smile slowly formed in Kyungsoo’s face. “You’re not just a boy who happens to live near me and go to the same school with me. You’re not just a classmate that sits beside me and practically glued to me for the rest of the school year. I didn’t reject a top college just because my best friends wasn’t accepted. I didn’t move out from home to live in a dorm just so I could spend more time with you, as if 24 hours wasn’t enough.”

  
Seeing the older like this is making Jongin feel useless, years of being together had never prepared him for something like this. It was always the other way around; him not getting accepted into his first choice college, him not being able to attend his father’s funeral because he was abroad on an exchange project, him with his failures but then Kyungsoo would hug him and whispered kind uplifting words onto his ears. Kyungsoo put him back together again, as if he was never broken in the first place.  
Jongin wants Kyungsoo to know that even if everyone is against them, Jongin would choose Kyungsoo again. If there’s something, anything, that could guarantee him that he would spend his next life with Kyungsoo, he would not think twice and do it.

  
He checks the road, making sure nothing is going to happen in the next minutes or so, and brings his body to face his boyfriend.

  
“Kyungsoo, I can turn deaf and blind when anyone says we’re not supposed to be together. As long as you’re with me. I know you’re probably shaken up with what happened with your father, but don’t ignore me. Please talk to me. Share your burden with me. Look me in the eyes and tell me why are you avoiding me for the past few days? Because, if it’s because what your father said about me—about us—it’s also my problem.” He reaches out and puts his hands on the other’s thighs, rubbing small circles to make him relax.  
They stay silent for several minutes. The radio plays something catchy and he hums, making a mental note to look up the song as he gets home.

_We don’t need a fancy town_  
_Or bottles that we can’t pronounce_  
_Cause anywhere, babe_  
_Is like Paris in the rain_  
_When I’m with you_

Jongin thought travels to the moment he realized his love for Do Kyungsoo is more than friends. The day was blue like today. Krystal broke up with him at breakfast that day because, according to her, Jongin was the stupidest man alive. Jongin didn’t understand. He only told her that he couldn’t attend her sister’s birthday that day because Kyungsoo was sick, but then she said they should end their relationship. He didn’t get what she meant. Not when he got to Kyungsoo’s dorm room with lunch and medicine for the older. Not when he insisted on staying because Kyungsoo was so pitiful when he’s sick. Not until they curled up together and Jongin got sick too and they laughed their asses at their stupidity.

  
That day, Jongin realized he would rather get sick than leave Kyungsoo alone.  
_(and that he is so, so, in love.)_

Suddenly he realized Kyungsoo had said something to him.

  
“I’m sorry, what?”

“I love you.” He said in a tiny voice with eyes set on his lap. But, Jongin knows the three words are for him. So, as if having mind of his own, his hand took the hand of a man who has been in his side for years, hoping they would have more years to spend together.  
Jongin takes a lungful of breath, _this is crazy_ , he thought and yet, “Hyung, I know this is in the middle of the road and we are stuck in this traffic for almost an hour now. I know this is probably not how you imagined this, _hell_ , this isn’t even how I imagined this.” Jongin shakes his head a little and sets his eyes on Kyungsoo's. “Not in the middle of the road, inside my older-than-me-sedan, but if you think about this, it’s kinda perfect? Because it’s us, but if you want me to do this again later I’d do it again and-” _God, this is_ _madness_ , another thought as he realizes he starts to stutter his words.

At this point, Kyungsoo truly looks like a deer caught in a highlight; he’s _alert_. “Are you going to...” Kyungsoo said as he straightened his posture, “Jongin, are you going to say what I think you're gonna say? I swear to God—”

  
“Will you marry me?”

Right here, in the beat up old sedan that’s been their home for years, with the radio playing a nice tune about falling in love, and the man in front of him beautifully beaming, “Yes,” Kyungsoo answers and he thinks it’s _perfect._

**Author's Note:**

> was that okay?????
> 
> it's been forever since i write, so i would love to hear your thoughts. reach me on twitter @tamareens if you wanna talk to me? and maybe?? be friends???  
> also, if you read this, i love you!


End file.
